


Century Late

by heyguysitsmerob



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, France (Country), Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Vengeance Demon(s), late 1800's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22582984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyguysitsmerob/pseuds/heyguysitsmerob
Summary: "Who’s to say that sad little vampire princesses shouldn’t get vengeance too?”-Anyanka is surprised when a desire for vengeance that she answers turns out to be from a murderous, psychotic vampire.
Relationships: Drusilla/Anya Jenkins
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Century Late

A Drusillya fanfiction inspired by a silly conversation with a new friend. Happy birthday!

_ “He is a scourge.  _

_ "He is a vile creature casting terror and pain in tandem across my being with his each and every step. I beg the Lord in all of His grace for forgiveness, but I cannot abide another moment on this earth while he lives.  _

_ "Had I the strength, I would wring the rancid breath from his neck.” _

-

Anyanka emerged into a musty hallway.

She examined her arms and found them clad in loose, black robes. As always, her powers had manifested her a set of clothes suited to the environment that she found herself in. Raising her hands to her head, she discovered that she was wearing a coif. Had she not been on the job, she might have giggled at the idea of a vengeance demon being dressed in a nun’s habit. Even after centuries of doing this work, it was a first. 

The setting didn’t match any church that she had ever seen. Even the most lackadaisical groundskeeper should have had the decency to wipe the cobwebs out of the rafters, yet this building had them in spades. As that thought occurred to her, she swore that she saw something larger than a bug scurrying out of view at the edge of her vision.

Run down as it was, however, there was no doubt that the girl who had called her here was in this building. Anyanka could feel her resentment pulling her like a magnet. Like an empty space begging to be filled, whose pull Anyanka would not be able to escape until she had satisfied it. This gravitational pull had brought her here across the boundaries of reality, and it had only intensified the closer she had gotten. 

Now, almost involuntarily, she walked to the door closest to where she had landed. It was already open, beckoning to her. The girl whose deepest and most perverted wish was about to come true was waiting for her just on the other side. She did her best to play the part of the meek devotee, minimizing her already slender frame by hunching over and occupying the doorway skittishly.

Her target was lying prostrate on the ground, murmuring something so quietly that not even Anyanka’s enhanced hearing could pick it up. In front of her was a wooden altar that seemed to be in just as shabby a condition as the rest of the church, adorned with nothing more than a wooden cross. At that, the right arm of the cross had been completely removed, leaving it horribly misshapen. The room was lit only by a row of candles that were sitting on the windowsill, casting the shadow of the disfigured cross across the floorboards, reaching all the way back to where Anyanka stood. 

She did not waste time pondering her target’s circumstances. The amulet she wore around her neck compelled her to make the deal as quickly as possible, and even if it didn’t, this place would not even rank on the list of the strangest places that Anyanka had been summoned to. She raised a pale hand and knocked on the door. 

“Drusilla?”

She had not known her target’s name until the exact moment that she spoke it, but once she had everything came flooding in. Images of her crying in confessional booths, being beaten by a raving woman and made to scrub her eyes with soap and water. Only a few of these startling images had to pass until Anyanka saw what she was looking for: the man. He was tall and pale, with marble shoulders and alabaster arms. She saw those arms holding the woman in front of her, who looked so gorgeous, saw them leading her by the hand through beautiful gardens and cityscapes, and finally she saw them raising a knife over the man’s head and plunging it into the heart of the woman from earlier, who had been so cruel to her daughter, whom Anyanka suspected had continued to love her through it all. 

In all of these visions, the girl named Drusilla had kept her doll-like eyes fixed straight ahead, facing whatever she was confronted with with complete vulnerability. She was gorgeous, and yet so tortured. Anyanka would fix that. 

It took several moments after Anyanka called her name for the girl to stir. She raised her head up and turned around, her every movement ginger. It was as if she were made of porcelain, and any sudden movement would cause her pieces to slide apart. 

“Yes?” she asked, her voice like a mouse from the bottom of a well.

“I wanted to check on you.” Anyanka allowed her hand to drop from the door frame as she took her first delicate steps into the room. “I could tell that you’ve been troubled lately and I wanted to see what was the matter.” It didn’t matter that Anyanka didn’t resemble any member of the church; her amulet would construct false memories of her in Drusilla’s head for as long as it took to get a wish out of her. 

Drusilla rose from the floor. She should’ve been taller than Anyanka, but her posture was stooped so much that their eyes were level, as if she wanted to minimize her presence in the room. Across all of her years in the industry Anyanka had begun to notice certain patterns in the abused women that she helped. This was one such.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” Drusilla said. Her eyes moved all over the room, never daring to rest on Anyanka for more than a second. “It’s just... _ him _ . No matter how many times or how loudly I beg the Lord, He cannot seem to wrest that vile man’s image from my head. I am ever so tortured.” At this, their eyes met for just a moment. In them, Anyanka saw the accumulation of what she imagined to be years of hurt and abuse, compounded by the angel-faced man that she’d seen in her visions.

She wanted so badly to let Drusilla know that her prayers had been answered, not by God but by someone actually willing to do something about them, and that her suffering was nearly over, but she resisted. There would be time enough for the two of them to rejoice in whatever destiny Drusilla chose for herself once the work was completed. She took Drusilla by the shoulder. “Why don’t you take a break? You’ve been here nearly half the day.”

“I can’t.” Drusilla brushed Anyanka away, and she was surprised at how cold the girl’s hand felt on hers. “I need to stay here. To atone for what happened to my poor mother…” Drusilla’s face puckered, and Anyanka could see the beginning signs of tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

“Drusilla—” When Anyanka took a step forward to try to touch her again, she recoiled as if struck. 

It was time for a more direct approach. “Drusilla, if that man were here right now, what would you most want him to do? Apologize? Repent? Throw himself on the sword?” 

“I don’t know…” Drusilla trailed off, and her eyes wandered towards the ceiling. It seemed like her tears had been staved off for the moment. As she thought, she almost gave Anyanka the impression of a child thinking about what she’d like to ask Saint Nick for Christmas. 

Before Drusilla could even begin her next sentence, the amulet beneath Anyanka’s clothes began to burn. The energy emanating from it made its way into her body, flowing through her veins and sending shivers down her spine. Drusilla was about to make her wish. The amulet was never wrong. Anyanka ached to let this bombastic energy out. All it would take from her was one simple word once the wish was spoken. Her lips literally tingled as she waited for Drusilla.

“I suppose that if Angelus were here right now…” 

She put a finger to her lips in thought. It was about to happen. 

“...I would want the strength to tear him limb from limb with my bare hands.”

“Done.”

Anyanka’s face was contorted into its demon form from the moment that she’d taken a breath to speak, and by then it was too late. The word was out of her mouth before she’d even processed what Drusilla said. The amulet glowed so bright and so verdant that it shown through her habit. 

It seemed like a shiver passed through Drusilla’s body as she suddenly reared up and gasped. Her eyes went wide, and Anyanka saw more life in them then than she had since she walked into the room. She had to admit, the wish wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting from such a docile young girl, but it would do the job just the same. 

Anyanka felt her face go back to normal as the amulet’s glow died down. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Drusilla?”

Drusilla was standing eerily still in the center of the room, with her hair hanging down over her face. Anyanka happened to notice that she was standing exactly at the crux of the cross’s shadow on the ground. As she did, Drusilla began to laugh. She had seen many women giddy over the results of their wishes, but none quite like this. This laugh couldn’t be pinned to any one emotion. It wandered, like a pianist’s hand sliding back and forth across the keys. At one moment it was elated and shrill, the next it was low and rumbling. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying. 

Anyanka decided that she’d seen enough. Her work was done, after all. Slowly, she began to back out of the room. A scream escaped her lips as Drusilla surged forward. In a heartbeat, her long nails had shredded the front of her habit and snatched the amulet from around her neck. Before Anyanka could even raise a hand to protect herself, she’d been grabbed by the throat and thrown against the wall. 

Her hands clamored at the arm that was pinning her there and found muscles as hard as steel taut beneath skin as cold as ice. She couldn’t hide the fear in her face as she looked back up at Drusilla. Her eyes were bright yellow and the skin on her face was bulbous and wrinkled, exactly like that of a vampire preparing to feed.

That wish couldn’t have turned Drusilla into a vampire, could it?

As Anyanka struggled to draw breath, Drusilla finally spoke. “I didn’t know that vengeance demons were so pretty,” she said, licking her lips stretched thin over monstrous fangs, and swiveling her head back and forth. 

Anyanka wanted to ask how she knew what she was, but was preoccupied with the nails digging into her skin. The sounds of her choking seemed to amuse Drusilla.

“Yes, I know what you are, sweet one.” Drusilla was barely speaking above a whisper, leaning so close that Anyanka could feel her breath on her ear. “Thank you for giving me my birthday present.” 

She released her hold on Anyanka’s neck and let her fall to the floor. Anyanka grabbed her chest and panted, desperate to fill the void that had opened up, but as her breath returned to her she realized that there was still something she was missing.

Drusilla let Anyanka’s pendant dangle from her fingers. She regarded it coolly with a smile playing at her lips. Her face had returned to normal, as well.

“Give that back,” Anyanka said between gasps. “I need it.”

Drusilla clicked her tongue, not once looking in Anyanka’s direction as she twisted the amulet different ways, studying how it captured the light at different angles. “Not until I’ve had my fun.” She smiled wide with her tongue still peeking out from between her teeth. “I don’t want you running off and telling anyone what we ladies have been getting up to.” Her voice sounded sweet and seductive, but her face never betrayed any tenderness.

“I don’t understand. I shouldn’t have been able to hear your prayer for vengeance if it wasn’t real!”

”It  _ was  _ real,” Drusilla pouted. “My Angelus has been very, very mean. Who’s to say that sad little vampire princesses shouldn’t get vengeance too?” 

Anyanka pressed herself back into the wall. She wanted to be anywhere other than where she was. “And all of this?” she asked, gesturing around to their surroundings. “You dress like a nun and make prayers to God just for fun?”

Drusilla’s hand rose to her mouth in a vain attempt to cover her devilish smile. “Hehe!” She giggled in short bursts, having only brief successes in stifling them. “You like my costume?” she asked, twirling around in a short circle that put the bloodstains on her habit’s back on full display. When she was done spinning, she continued looking at Anyanka with the same terrifying smile. 

As a vengeance demon, Anyanka was used to using her wits to get out of trouble. She’d been thrown by the fact that the distraught girl she’d come to rescue had turned out to be a vampire, but now that there was air in her lungs again she knew that she could talk her way out of this. She dusted off her clothes and stood up. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Anyanka.” She extended her hand.

Drusilla closed the distance between them and sidestepped her hand, standing so that their faces were only a few inches apart. “My name is Drusilla, but my friends call me Dru.” She raised a cold hand and caressed the side of Anyanka’s face. She resisted the urge to pull away from it, mostly because she had nowhere to back up to.

“My name is Anyanka,” she said. 

“And what do your friends call you?” Drusilla asked, fixing her with a playful look. She traced her finger down the curve of Anyanka’s jaw while she stuttered out her response.

“I. Um. I don’t have many friends,” she said.

“Well,” Drusilla patted the side of Anyanka’s face one more time before letting her hand drop. “Now you do.” She laughed then, not like a villain as she had moments before, but like a highschool girl about to share a secret. This laugh was accompanied immediately by a purring noise from the back of her throat that Anyanka didn’t know how to interpret. She turned and walked away, spinning the amulet around her index finger. “I promise to give you your toy back as soon as we’re done taking Angelus apart and putting him back together in a way that pleases us.” She articulated her statement by clawing the air spastically with her fingernails.

“Us?” Anyanka asked. 

“Of course.” Drusilla’s grin was back to being sinister. “You  _ are _ my new bosom friend.” 

-

Anyanka had heard from some prophets that human clothing was going to become less cumbersome in the next couple of centuries, and she was very excited about that. While it was gorgeous, she felt stifled in the lilac gown that Drusilla had picked out for her, buried beneath five layers of fabric. She was fiddling absentmindedly with its laces when a head rolled up next to her foot.

“Ew!” she exclaimed, kicking it away into the gutter.

Drusilla’s laugh was deranged as she divorced the head of another peasant from its neck and raised it above her head, allowing steaming blood to flow in a waterfall into her mouth and all over her face. The front of her dress already looked as if she’d rolled in a barrel of raspberry jam.

“Dru, stop throwing the heads at me!” Anyanka said. “It’s disgusting!”

Drusilla held the head by her fingertips and thrust it toward Anyanka face-first. “But I want you to  _ hear  _ it, Anyanka. The night sings for us each and every time we put one of the kids to sleep.” She took the head and cradled it against her chest as she pouted at Anyanka. “It sings for all of us that are left.”

The only sounds Anyanka could hear were those of the townspeople screaming while fleeing from them, clamoring into their homes, boarding up their doors, and hiding underneath tables with their loved ones pulled close.

She sighed.

The two of them had been tearing a gash through the French countryside for nearly two months now, and this Angelus fellow had yet to appear. With the newfound strength granted to her by her wish, Drusilla was now at least three times the strength of a normal vampire, strong enough to lift carriages overhead without breaking a sweat.

From what Anyanka could piece together from her partner’s demented ravings, she and Angelus had kind of a whirlwind relationship. She’d seen it a thousand times before: fighting, making up, making love, then starting the whole process anew. Except that this time, between two immortal vampires that Anyanka was pretty sure had never actually been in a relationship, the ‘making love’ step seemed to be replaced with ‘sewing terror across continental Europe’. To be fair, though, from what she could tell, the other two steps seemed to involve a fair bit of that, too.

“Wait, I’m on your side—!” a wrinkle-faced vampire wailed as Drusilla ripped his head from his shoulders, holding it as it turned to dust in her hands.

“That one didn’t sing, Anya,” she said, looking to Anyanka for some kind of solace.

Drusilla had coined the nickname ‘Anya’ for her, claiming that all good bosom friends had pet names for each other. She still could not decide if she liked it. 

“No, it didn’t.” She turned and started to walk back towards the inn where they were staying.

Anyanka didn’t particularly mind the fact that this wish had gone horrifically wrong. So far, Drusilla hadn’t made any indication that she was going to default on her promise to return Anyanka’s amulet once they found Angelus, and once she did, all it would take would be one sweep of a hand from D’hoffryn and a mountain of paperwork to pretend like the whole thing had never happened, rewinding time back to before the wish and wiping the slate clean. There was a protocol for these types of things.

Drusilla licked her fingers a couple of times and then smacked her lips, wiping her mouth clean on the white sleeve of her dress. “Well, wait up then!” she said, hiking her skirt up and following after Anyanka. 

In the meantime, it didn’t take much to keep Drusilla happy. For the most part, watching her revel in her power and allowing herself to be called pet names sufficed to keep the vampire’s bloodlust at bay. Every now and then, however, Drusilla required something extra. 

As she caught up to her, Drusilla closed an ice-cold hand around Anyanka’s elbow and pulled her backward. “My sweet, I shall be very cross with you if you continue to walk away from me after I made all of those pretty boys sing for you,” she said, looping an arm around Anyanka’s hips and drawing her close. 

By now, Anyanka knew exactly how to handle this situation.

“Drusill—Dru, I…” She put a hand on Drusilla’s chest and feebly tried to push her away. 

But knowing how to handle something and being able to put it into action are two different things.

“Could it be that you were never interested in my boys to begin with?” Drusilla asked, idly playing with Anyanka’s hair while breathing deeply through her nose. She cocked her neck like a tiger considering a mouse. “Even though they tasted so sweet?”

“Dru, we’re in the middle of the street…” 

“ _ I _ know something that tastes even sweeter.”

Drusilla pressed her lips into Anyanka’s and, as always, she found herself eagerly returning the kiss. Truly, Drusilla was gorgeous, and Anyanka had had plenty of experiences that extended far beyond human understandings of gender and sexuality in the past thousand years. Anyanka let herself flow into the vampire, allowing her soft edges to fill in the hard corners of Dru’s strong, rigid body. Her hands found Dru’s hips while she held her by the side of her head, guiding the movement of her head. 

Love between demons was short, violent, and usually involved some kind of sword, but things with Dru were different. However many times they frolicked through pools of blood or took turns flaying innkeepers, she never seemed to tire of the many characters that Anyanka would play with her. Some days she would be cowed, trying to deny the primal feelings awakened by her murderous vampire girlfriend. On others she was cold steel, ordering Dru to go into that store and steal her a necklace she fancied, or go make the man who just looked at her wrong six inches shorter. 

Today she feigned sheepishness, weakly trying to bat away Dru’s advances as the vampire invaded her space. She left frost on Anyanka’s neck from her trail of kisses as the place that she was gripping her thigh caught on fire. That was Drusilla: oil and water and wine all in one glass. Anyanka had a feeling that they were going to be getting to her favorite part soon when their game was interrupted.

“Drusilla.”

The man’s voice was incessantly charming while at the same time completely devoid of humanity. Anyanka had only heard it one time before, in the visions she’d received during her first conversation with Drusilla.

Angelus was just as handsome as he had been then, too. His pale skin seemed to suck the light out of the lanterns lining the street, meating it back out in a trickle. Where Drusilla had seemed to Anyanka like a porcelain doll when they first met, Angelus was a statue. The image was completed by the sword he was gripping in his hand. 

Drusilla gave Anyanka one more peck before turning around to face him. “Daddy has finally come home,” she said, bundling her sentence up next to a dagger in her cloak. 

“You  _ disappeared _ back in Venice, Dru. I had to finish massacring that parish without you!” Angelus was laughing and shaking his head as Drusilla approached him, but he seemed to pick up on the threat in her words as she got closer. He flicked the tip of his sword up at her and took a couple of paces forward to meet her so that its point was hovering only a few inches away from her navel. “You aren’t still mad about how I let them tie rocks to you and throw you in the canal, are you? Because I made sure William jumped in right after you…as soon as I saw if you were going to float or not!” This time his smile did not reach his eyes.

Drusilla snatched the sword from his hands by its blade and threw it into the side of a house with a  _ thunk _ , where it quivered back and forth. Angelus looked stunned, his head going back and forth between his empty hand and the wall where his blade was lodged. “I’m not mad, my sweet angel,” Drusilla said, closing the gap between them. She laid her head on Angelus’ chest, moving with the confidence of someone with complete invulnerability. She wrapped him in a delicate embrace.

Over her shoulder, Angelus made eye contact with Anyanka. He looked momentarily confused, as if this were the first time he’d noticed her. “Who is that?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows and wriggling to try to escape her embrace, but he found that he could not pry Drusilla’s arms away. His own were pinned to his sides. Anyanka took a step back. “Why are you so strong? What’s happening?” he asked, his struggles becoming more agitated. 

“The mermaids spoke to me at the bottom of that canal, Angelus,” Drusilla said, picking him up and turning him around so that his back was to Anyanka. 

“What’d they tell you, Dru?” Angelus asked, a drop of nervousness leaking into his voice. He was patting her shoulder placatingly.

Now it was Drusilla’s turn to look at Anyanka around Angel. Her vampire face was on full display, making her eyes a neon yellow as she locked eyes with her girlfriend. “They told me…” She dug her long fingernails into Angelus’ back, one hand on either side of his spine.  _ “...that your hair is hideous!”  _ She tore him in half, clean down the middle. Immediately, his massive body began turning to dust in her hands as the sound of a dozen held breaths escaped from the space that Angelus used to occupy. It didn’t seem as if Drusilla had even had to strain herself to completely bisect the man that had terrorized Europe for nearly a century. 

She started cackling, rearing her head back and advertising her merriment to all of France. Anyanka was already moving to embrace her before those laughs gave way to tears. They began to pour down Drusilla’s face like a burst dam. Pieces of Angelus, picked up by the faint breeze, made their way into her mouth and doubled her over coughing. “Anya—!” She wheezed while clutching her face. 

“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Anyanka said, taking her lover’s head in her hands and looking her in her still golden eyes. The image of a vampire, still with her fangs out and face contorted crying real tears, broke her heart. “This is the cycle of things, Dru. Men wrong us, and then…” She nudged a pile of dust with her foot. “...we get vengeance. We make it right.” 

“But it’s not right!” Drusilla shoved Anyanka away, and she was sent careening onto her bottom. “Nothing has been right since Angelus planted all of these thoughts into my mind!” She pinched her fingers together and tapped her temple as if she meant to carve her way in and pry them out. “I used to be a good girl before I had all of these  _ thoughts  _ get inside my head! Before—!” It looked like she was about to say something else, but she was interrupted by another bout of body-wracking sobs.

Anyanka ignored the fact that her palms were scraped up from breaking her fall as she stood up. It was time to switch characters. “I can still see her, you know,” she said.

“Who is that?” Drusilla asked. “Grandmother?”

“No.” Anyanka extended her hand again, but this time waited for Drusilla to take it. After a beat, she did, and Anyanka pulled her into an embrace. For this, she rose to her full height, and ran her fingers through Drusilla’s hair. “I can still see that girl whose mother made her scrub her eyes with soap.” She felt Drusilla tense, but she continued. “And whose friend filled her head with  _ mean _ thoughts that had no busy being there.” 

“I don’t want to talk about that.” Drusilla started to tremble. “I don’t want to talk about that at all.”

“And you don’t have to.” Anyanka broke their hug and kissed Drusilla lightly, in a pestering fashion, trying to get some reaction out of her other than remorse. When there was none, she said, “But I still believe that I can help that girl.”

Drusilla’s entire demeanor changed at once as Anyanka said that, her eyebrows pulling down and her vamp-face dissolving as she looked at Anyanka almost pityingly. “Oh, Anyanka.” As the two locked eyes then, Anyanka knew for sure that there was something lurking beneath the surface there, something that she had never been able to scratch in the months that they had spent together. “To help that girl, you’re a century late.”

Still, the tears flowed, and in another moment, those eyes were fogged over and unreachable once again.

-

The two sat with their backs up against a building. Drusilla had had to murder a few more police officers to ensure their getaway, but they were finally in the clear once again when she offered her hand to Anyanka. In it was her amulet, its green gem gleaming softly in the lamplight. The message was clear: she had done what she needed to do, and now their time together was over.

The expression on Drusilla’s face didn’t leave any room for disagreement. Anyanka took the amulet without a word and put it back around her neck. She felt whole again for the first time in weeks as she did so, her demonic powers surging back into her body like a river about to overflow. Almost immediately afterward she could feel herself being recalled back to the office, but she knew that she could put it off for long enough to do what she had to.

“Will I remember?” Drusilla asked, turning to look at Anyanka. “The music we made together?”

As soon as Anyanka met her gaze, the lie died on her tongue. “No,” she said.

Drusilla nodded, considering the pavement. She looked up again. “Will you?” 

Anyanka could feel the warmth moving throughout her chest, similar to what she felt before granting wishes. She didn’t have long. She gripped the amulet, as if enclosing it in flesh would stop it from working its will. “Yes. I’ll remember.” She smiled softly, trying to make her partner feel better in whatever way she could.

“That’s no good, Anya. I so loathe feeling like I’ve forgotten something, and I shall be forgetting to miss you every moment. And while I am forgetting, you’ll be…and then…” She started to tremble again.

Anyanka’s amulet was red hot as she laid her hand on Drusilla’s shoulder. “Then I will teach you a spell, so that you’re able to remember if… _ when  _ we meet again, and I will get to love you all over.” Drusilla nodded, encouraging her to go on. “Call me Anya, and kiss me just like this.” She pressed her lips to Drusilla’s. “ _ Three  _ times.” She kissed her two more times. “Call me by the name that only my closest of bosom friends are allowed to call me, and you will be able to remember our time together, and we can raid the sky for its stars all over again.”

“But how will I know to call you by that name, if I’ve forgotten? And to kiss you like that?”

Anyanka pursed her lips. “I will be sure to make plenty more bosom friends between now and then, and you will hear the name from them, not even realizing that you were the one that came up with it. And as for the kisses…” She kissed Drusilla one last time, deeply, trying desperately to drink in all of her in one go. “I will not allow you to escape from me without them.”

Drusilla let her hand lay limply on Anyanka’s neck. “I am excited to meet all of these new friends that you’re going to be making.” Her gaze was sad, but as always, Anyanka got the idea that she was looking further ahead than she could comprehend. 

“I am, too,” she said as she vanished, the last words hanging in the air for several moments after her body was gone.

Drusilla’s gaze remained fixed on the space where her lover used to be, her bittersweet smile not wavering for a moment. In the few moments before time unwound and put itself back together, she thought of the friends that Anyanka was going to make, and how wonderful it would be to meet them, and how they would all laugh at the years the two had spent apart, with their bodies intertwined and their hearts racing. 

“That was a beautiful lie, Anya,” she said, forgetting. 


End file.
